


the curtain falls

by redandgold



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Blade Runner Fusion, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-18 08:55:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14209638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/pseuds/redandgold
Summary: There is one religion left in the world, and it begins with grass, a crowded street, a white rectangle on either side.





	the curtain falls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brampersandon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brampersandon/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRFDEE CAITWIN!!!!  
> Please accept my apologies in advance for what follows ;------; It's - MRGH I'M STILL MRGH ABOUT IT - but wrings paws helplessly it's done.. I hope it isn't too bad?????? im sorry pls vore my disaster ass
> 
> This was a Trip to write, split between manic 900-word episodes and weeks of slap me with a cucumber what do i do now. I even had a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/wellcharted/playlist/69lpNYC0YVP0gWLXMhVDOU?si=sxL7hvzURuCf1id8IZuNBQ)! I never have a playlist! (it's, like, all hans zimmer)
> 
> If anything doesn't make sense it's because it - doesn't. it's science fiction not history fiction ;-------;
> 
> You don't have to know Blade Runner, but basically - replicants are sort of organic robits, an underclass grown to serve humans, and the main distinction is that they don't have empathy (hence the baseline test which is meant to draw out emotional reactions from them).
> 
> Loyalty prompt! And loyalty kink I guess????

 

 

_Recite your baseline._

Carve from stone and dream a barrow for the poet on waters of fountains that weep and whisper and weep and whisper and weep for eternity. At its dusty and sad ending, the day.

_Barrow._

Barrow.

_Do you dream? Dream._

Dream.

_What do you think about when you aren't working? Dream._

Dream.

_Do you know what it's like to love? Dream._

Dream.

_Why do you cry? Weep._

Weep.

_Have you ever lost someone you love? Weep._

Weep.

_Do you hate being who you are? Weep._

Weep.

_Waters of fountains that weep._

Waters of fountains that weep.

 _At its dusty and sad ending, the day. Why don't you r_ _epeat that three times._

At its dusty and sad ending, the day. At its dusty and sad ending, the day. At its dusty and sad ending, the day.

 

*

 

He can feel his fingers.

That's the first thing that registers. He can feel his fingers. _What are fingers?_ He doesn't know. The things at the edge of his vision. The things that extend from the fat round thing, joined to the middle of your being. Not being. He isn't being. That are made from bone and flesh. Not real bone and flesh. Stitched together. Created. That are used to hold things and take things and make things. That were used to make him. Created. He is created.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

He gulps; it blows his chest apart. He is shivering on the ground. The air punches through his half-filled lungs like a cyclone, like eating something too fast. _What is eating?_ He can feel the electrons traveling from his brain to the rest of his body at hyper speed, along synthetic neural systems designed especially for this. Designed. Not in the way whatever created humans designed them. In the way humans designed themselves.

He feels like he's burning up. He draws his knees to his chest and hold them there, fetal, like a baby. _What's a baby?_ The ground is cold and hard, concrete, and he wishes it were something softer. Easier on his back, naked and exposed to the sterile air that pricks at his skin.

There are sounds around him. Sounds that are slowly filtering through his ears, ears only now developing the ability to hear, brain only now developing the ability to listen. Words that jump out of him like they're coming from a dictionary. It’s like growing up, except he’s growing up in two seconds.

"Hey."

That’s a greeting. Yes. He breathes again, gasps as he takes in a whole lungful this time, rubs his thumb against his knee. It’s slick with some kind of fluid. All of him is.

"Hey. Can you hear me?"

 _Something about you is wrong._ His brain is instructing him to uncurl, get onto his knees, crawl. He rolls himself upright, puts his palms against the ground. Pushes.

"Don’t try to stand up," says the voice, mildly, as if he’s talking about the weather. _What’s the weather?_ "It won’t be good for you."

He ignores it. Gets his feet under him and rocks upwards. Immediately he doubles over and throws up, some kind of pseudo-biological fluid that burns his throat as it comes up.

"Clever," says the voice.

His right ventronmedial prefrontal cortex must be working now, because it pieces together the social/emotional context of the word and he feels a flash of what might be annoyance, either at the voice or himself. He sinks back to his knees. It occurs to him then that he hasn't opened his eyes.

"G K One Dash Eight Point One," says the voice. "Acknowledge."

"Acknowledged," he rasps out, involuntarily. His vocal cords are working. He wonders briefly if they're made of plastic, if there's any part of him that they chose to stinge on. Maybe down there, if he wasn't built for pleasure. His hand goes to his dick and the voice laughs.

"Don't worry. You are. Above average."

Something wet and cold blasts him and he yelps, trying to shy away but knocking up against the wall instead. It's some kind of disinfectant, he thinks, and it stinks. Smells horribly clinical regardless of whether it's supposed to be bioproduct or not. _What is clinical?_

The jet stops. He opens his eyes.

He's standing in a small, square room. His brain gives him the dimensions in seconds. The walls are flushed white, as is the floor, except for the grid that he's standing on, which is made of metal strips and covers a hole that looks to go a long way down. There's some kind of a sac hanging over his head that's been popped open; that must be where he'd fallen from. The fluid that he'd been suspended in has all leaked down the drain. _Gravity._ The jet of disinfectant stops.

The voice, he sees now, belongs to a man. His brain sticks on a few quantifiers almost immediately: Tall. Brunette. Stubbled. Handsome. Suited. The man is smiling and the smile is both white and sharp.

"My name is Xabi," he says. "I am your handler. Your, ah. Guardian angel, if you would."

_What is Guardian Angel?_

"It's nice to meet you, GK1."

"GK1," he repeats. He hates it.

Xabi smiles like he's aware of that. "Please sit." He gestures towards the corner of the room, where a seat is extending from the wall, sleek and silent, also white.

 _White._ A strange reverberation runs through him. There's a twinge in his head but he ignores that, too; he's good at something, at least. He walks unsteadily towards the seat and falls down heavily. Xabi takes the seat opposite with rather more elegance.

"Let's begin with a few tests. What is the square root of eight, to the nearest five decimals?"

"Two point eight two eight four two." His voice comes out strange, almost like it's mimicking Xabi's accent. _Spanish_ , his supercomputer-brain tells him. _His name. Old Basque. Xabier translates to New Home._

Xabi's watching him intently. He refocuses.

"What is the chemical compound of sugar?"

"C12H22O11."

"Under which two conditions can a player change places with the goalkeeper?"

"The referee is informed before the change is made and the change is made during a stoppage in play."

"Very good."

The twinge has intensified into a sharp pain that burns and he lets out a moan that he doesn't mean to. Xabi tilts his head.

"You might want to sleep for this," he says, almost kindly. _What is kind?_ "The system is going to download your memories for you. These are all false memories. Forged memories. You are not real. You are only thirty minutes old. You should remember this. It will help you in the end."

"How do I sleep?" he asks. His brain is throbbing.

"Close your eyes," Xabi says.

He closes his eyes.

 

*

 

You start playing for Real Madrid in 2024. You are nine years old. Your whole family is always there for your birthdays. They come down to watch you at the club; your father is a civil servant and your mother is a hairdresser. You are an only child. Your favourite toy is a football. You were born in Madrid, before the Blackout, before they began exploring other worlds. You remember breaking your arm falling out of someone's spinner. Your father used to bring you to games. You used to enjoy them. You still do. You have been playing for Real Madrid for twenty years and soon you are going to come back soon from injury. You feel nothing but pride, and joy, and devotion.

No. No. No. You are six hours old.

 

*

 

"Good," Xabi says crisply. "You're awake."

He rolls his head over. He's lying in a different room, on a bed, still without clothes. His skin is dry. Xabi is sitting in a chair next to the bed, peering at him with polite disinterest. When he determines that he likes what he sees, he removes a grey suit from the closet and tosses it on the bed.

"Here. Put these on."

He does so without complaint or comment. He sits upright in the bed, his feet dangling down, shiny shoes brushing the carpeted floor.

"Do you have a baseline?"

"No."

"Ah. Of course. I always forget this."

Xabi bends forward and leans into him, so close that he can feel Xabi's stubble brushing his jawline. "Start transmission for GK1-8.1 baseline," Xabi says. "Carve from stone and dream a barrow for the poet on waters of fountains that weep and whisper and weep and whisper and weep for eternity. At its dusty and sad ending, the day. Stop."

A curious thing; his brain freezes for a moment, and then uncurls. Sighs. When he refocuses on Xabi everything seems that much more stable. Xabi smiles at him, beatific.

"When you're ready," he says.

 

*

 

They walk down a long, narrow corridor, dimly lit by golden light and lined by dark ebony. Real wood, he thinks, so whoever owns this place is rich. Xabi stops at a section of wall and presses his palm to the surface. The door that previously wasn't there slides open without a sound.

There are two men inside. One is sitting behind the desk, and one is standing up. Both have white hair, and both he knows the names off immediately, as if he's reading off from a database in his head.

Which, of course, is exactly what he's doing.

"This is him?" asks Perez.

Xabi nods. There's a bit of a jump in his jaw, all of a sudden.

"Looks fine," Mourinho observes dryly. "Or more than. Why do they always look like catalogue models, Alonso?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Not that it matters. Better PR. Advertising and all."

"Yes, sir."

"What's his number again?" 

"GK1, sir."

"GK1. Of course. Has he responded well?"

"Very well, sir."

They finally turn to him, as if he's not been in the room the whole time. He shies away from Perez's gaze without knowing why. Meets Mourinho's eyes instead and feels something twist in his stomach. Xabi rocks back and forth on his heels. He looks like he's trying to be diplomatic without saying anything at all.

"Performance log for GK1-8.1," Perez says.

"Model version: Nexus 9. Product serial number: N9MAA20549. Inception date: 20th May 2045. Expiry date: open. Condition: scanning. No defects detected."

 _Beep_ , he almost wants to add at the end of the list. Sense of humour. Can they programme that too? He wouldn't put it past them.

Mourinho tilts his head. "Command log for GK1-8.1," he says.

"My liaison Wallace officer is: Xabier Alonso.  I report to the following humans: Florentino Perez. Jose Mourinho. Do you wish to update the commanding log?"

Perez and Mourinho exchange a look.

"Yes," Mourinho says. "Authorisation for command for GK1-8.1. Gianluigi Buffon."

 

*

 

They step into another corridor. This one is shorter, steel plated, and ends in what his brain informs him is a spinner; VTOL, jet propulsion. Peugeot. Xabi opens the door and he gets a clear memory of the first time he sat in one, aged twenty five and being shuttled to some VIP event in Porto.

No. False memory. Two hours old.

He begins to cry. He can't help it; something goes _click_ within him and there are tears streaming down his face, sobs making his chest shake. He can almost think of it dispassionately, like his mental state and physical state have delinked. _What are my tears made of?_ he wonders, listening to himself cry. The same as humans, or saline solution?

Xabi watches him. "Don't worry," he says. "This happens to everyone new. Your limbic system is adjusting."

He stumbles to a seat inside the spinner, blinking back hot, furious tears. Why did they let robots cry? Maybe certain people found it kinky. But for non-pleasure models? Blade runners? Athletes?

He cries for not being real. He cries for being seven hours young.

Xabi throttles the engine.

 

*

 

"They will likely desert Italy soon," Xabi explains, pushing open the glass doors. Nothing here is as sleek as Perez's complex, all machine-operated and digitised; here things must still be touched, people instead of AI. There are some old black and white shirts on the walls. Somewhere farther off there’s a kettle boiling. "The tide will only get worse. But they have the best goalkeeper, and your employers want the best."

"You’re not with them?"

Xabi laughs. It sounds like something fake he’s gotten good at. "No. I work between teams."

"Football teams?"

"Any team that needs me."

"Where was your last job?"

"England."

"Isn’t that – "

"Yes," says Xabi, and turns away to make a call.

He would pursue it except he realises he’s standing on grass. Not real, organic grass, grown from the soil underfoot, but grass nevertheless; it smells like what he remembers from the childhood he didn’t have. The field stretches to the other end of his line of vision. They're out in the open. The sun peeks through clouds that are tinted iron on the underside, and the slats of light hurt his eyes as he turns to look. Grass is not cheap, so either Juventus are rich, or they just love their football.

_What is –_

Xabi’s waving a tall man over. He looks over the stranger once. So this is Gigi Buffon. He’d tried to do some reading on the spinner, and he’s taken notes on the accolades and the expensive transfer and the longevity. Certainly looks like it, he thinks, resting on his face. There’s something weather-beaten about his face, but not in a bad way. Like he's seen things. It gives him an air of confidence, or gravity, or both.

He wonders briefly if he'll ever get old. His fingers reach up to his face, unknowingly. Buffon sees this and smiles.

"So this is him," he says.

He stiffens under Buffon's gaze, sharp and loaded with something he can't place. Xabi has the most pleasant of smiles on his face. His eyes are blank.

"They should have made you younger," Buffon comments, rolling the ball between his gloves. "You don’t look like you have that much time left."

He keeps his face placid, intending not to rise to the bait of _I am a replicant. I only look old. I don't have any weaknesses_ _. I could play forever. You –_

"What's your name?"

He blinks.

"G K One Dash Eight – "

Buffon stows the ball under one arm and waves the other, irritable. "Not your number. Your name."

He looks helplessly at Xabi, who shrugs back nonchalantly.

"I don't have one," he says in the end. "I am a replicant."

"You are a goalkeeper," Buffon says. He enunciates every word crisply and cleanly. His eyes are heavy and bright at the same time. "All goalkeepers have names. Pick a name."

His mind dredges up another memory, then, something else he never did but remembers anyway. A group of boys chasing him through an unnamed city with a sandy beach. Speaking the same language Xabi spoke. They had been aiming for his lunch, and he had not let them take it. He doesn't remember the chase, or the kicking; he remembers instead the smell of the sea and endless blue.

It's funny what they choose for you to remember. He wonders whether humans can pick, whether it's something helps or if things just spring back into their heads unbidden, parts of a jigsaw and something always missing. One of the boys had stood with his fists curled and called himself Iker.

"Iker," he says.

Buffon looks thoughtful.

"Iker," he repeats. "Meaning _visitation_ _._ Fitting. Very well, then, Iker. It's nice to meet you."

Iker is proud of himself. For a moment.

"Since he's named himself, you might as well give him a last name," Xabi says dryly. "Their shirt sales will be better."

Buffon shifts his gaze to Xabi, slow, ponderous. There's nothing threatening in it at all but the speed, and the languidness. Xabi doesn't flinch.

"I don’t like you," Buffon says, affably.

"That’s okay," Xabi says, equally affably. "No one does."

"Some less than others."

Iker sees something crack in Xabi's face at last, but Buffon is already turning back to him. He's the first person, Iker thinks, who addresses him like he's actually there in the room with everyone else. A small act of kindness Iker isn't sure he deserves. "Casillas," Buffon says, the same thoughtful gaze occupying his features. "Also _home_ , though grander than Xabier. Visiting home. Coming home. Do you like that?"

Iker Casillas is conditioned to respond in the affirmative to anything Buffon asks him to do. He nods.

"Very good." Buffon turns back to Xabi, whose face is pleasantly blank again. "Can we sign off, then?"

"Of course." Xabi produces an electronic chit from his pocket and Gigi waves a hand over it. His signature appears freshly printed on the gridded glass, dimly dark under what sunlight they still have. Iker wonders, absurdly, if he ought to get one now that he has a name.

Xabi tilts his head at him. "Sit."

Iker sits, crosses his legs, feels the damp grass press into the cotton of his suit.

"Stand."

Iker stands. His brain is hurting again. Like everything is being re-polished, burnished to a gleam. Suddenly the man who would have been his father is calling him by his name.

"Punch Gigi."

Iker blinks. "My programme does not allow for me to harm others," he says, in a voice so monotonous it might not have been real.

He isn't. He isn't real. He has to remember that.

Buffon is smirking. "Like a dog," he says, and Iker has to pull up what a _dog_ is, furry and almost unreal. "Wallace does work miracles."

"He works," Xabi says politely. "Thank you for your help, Mr. Buffon. I will come by every so often to conduct baseline tests. Iker. I will meet you tonight for dinner and show you where you are quartered. Good day."

He turns heel smartly, and walks back past the glass doors.

Buffon looks at Iker and quirks an eyebrow. "Bet you anything he's one of them," he says, conspiratorially, then corrects himself. "You. Sorry."

Iker looks back at him, blank. It isn't something he's going to contest, rude as it might be. But then he doesn't think that Buffon meant to be rude. He doesn't think anything of Buffon, just yet. There are things he knows: _captain, fan favourite, the embodiment of Juventus_ , but none of these resemble meaning. A captain is a rank in the army. A fan favourite should logically be the most skilled player. People cannot be football clubs.

"Talkative, aren't you."

Buffon is watching him closely. Perhaps this isn't what he wants. Iker readjusts his expression to mimic Xabi's polite interest; there's a pause and then Buffon laughs, a laugh that comes out in breaths, two rows of teeth that are just yellow and chipped enough to be human.

"Don't start _that._ It's not good for you. If you're a robot you might as well maintain good manners, eh?"

Iker nods, numbly. His brain is starting to hurt again.

Buffon must notice, because he's leaned forward even as Iker begins to fall, and catches him before he hits the ground. His hands are big and steady. Goalkeeper's hands, Iker thinks, stupidly. It is the job of the goalkeeper to catch things as they fall.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"Nothing to be sorry about," Buffon says cheerily. His arms are very warm, warmer than the spinner or the bed. Iker thinks of the not-blood being pumped around himself just to keep his body temperature stable. Thinks of how cold he must be to Buffon. "Why don't you just lie here for a while? I'll find you some kit and when you feel better I'll introduce you to the team."

Iker nods again. Then the arms are gone and his back is padded with the same damp grass, seeping into the fabric.

Lie on the grass and close your eyes. Lie on the football pitch and close your eyes. That is where you are. A football pitch. You were born here, you will die here. Hala Madrid. At its dusty and sad ending, the day.

 

*

 

Here:

  1. The pitch.
  2. The world.
  3. His own consciousness, if he has one. A place that doesn't belong to anyone else. A place he can go to and won't sit if someone tells him to sit.



He is nineteen years old. He's wearing a shirt, yellow and black; it's probably the ugliest thing he's ever seen. Reminds him of bees. _What are –_ there are people around him, clamouring, all the way up to where the building touches the sky. France is no longer safe after the radiation but there were too many people so they built a glass dome around Paris. It's very convincing.

The clouds have gathered and are dark. He tilts his head up and imagines the rain; the rain and tears, disappearing, the water. The people around him are clamouring still. What are they screaming about? There is a name on the back of his jersey. He waits for something to bloom in his chest, whatever it is that's seized these people, but it doesn't come.

Here. On the pitch. A memory that is not a memory. Rain that is not rain. The waters of fountains that weep and whisper. The fountains that are carved from stone.

 

*

 

He says, "My name is Iker."

Buffon gazes at him, amused. "Yes," he says. He's kneeling in the grass, watching. Iker can hear the shouts of his teammates behind them, but he seems to pay no attention. "That is something we have established."

Iker fumbles. "Casillas."

"And I'm Gigi Buffon," Buffon says, inclining his head by way of bowing. "Please call me Gigi, unless you're my mother. I hope not. Are you hungry?"

"No," says Iker truthfully, since he can't lie.

"Very good. Then we can do some practice. Have you ever played football before?"

"Yes. No."

Gigi raises an eyebrow.

"I remember playing," Iker says, haltingly, like he's looking for some stable ground to stand on. "In a stadium. On training fields like this. Not here, though. In Spain. But they must have been put in me. I was born yesterday."

"Good that you remember. Stand." Gigi follows the fluid arc of Iker as he pushes himself off the ground. "You'll be fine. The rules are simple." He walks towards what Iker knows is a goalpost and puts his hand on it, still gloved. There is a way he touches the goalpost. Iker doesn't know what it means. "This is yours. Yours and no one else's. You should love it, cherish it, protect it. You should never be turning around and looking at it, unless it is before the game and you are clapping the fans. Otherwise you'll be picking the ball out of the net, and to come face to face with it is disappointment."

Iker was not built expressly to be poetic, but he distils what Gigi means. So. Guard this with your life. He can do that.

_Why?_

He holds his tongue. This is his job. Replicants are servants, so serve.

Gigi hands him a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, a pair of gloves. He's changing into them even before Gigi can shove him into the nearest toilet, but no one seems to be complaining. Everyone is far too intent on their own exercises.

"You're not with them," he says, not a question so much as a statement.

"I'm with you," Gigi says.

Iker looks up at the goal, suit folded neatly and placed besides. It seems awfully large. So wide and tall that it's beyond the reach of anyone, even a robot manufactured to be better than anyone. He takes a step forward and then turns his back on it, knees settled into a low stance and palms facing out, so that all he has in his line of vision is Gigi.

It feels terribly familiar, even if Iker knows it isn't. It feels like he's done this a thousand times before, all the way down to the thump in his chest. He shifts his feet on the grass and it rustles like the crack of a gunshot, echoing in his ears. Everything is heightened. The warmth of the gloves. The bead of sweat on Gigi's lip.

Gigi kicks the ball. Iker dives, correctly, plucks the ball out of the air and tucks it into his chest. Ball and replicant hit the ground, replicant rolling over to break the landing before getting to his knees.

He looks up at Gigi, expecting some kind of congratulations. _You did well._ He guarded the goal with his life. Wasn't that all?

Gigi is looking at him with a strange expression on his face, something Iker's not seen before and something his brain can't interpret. "I caught the ball," Iker says meekly, and hates himself for it in the moment. Affection. Approval. Pat the puppet on the head and make him feel like a real life boy.

"Yes," Gigi says, slowly. There is something sad in his eyes.

 

*

 

No one lives to eat anymore. Iker wonders why replicants weren't just made always full, so that they wouldn't have stomach pangs or have to waste time on food; maybe others out off-world are. Maybe those, the actual robot-slaves, perform only their function until their sockets gave way. No eating or sleeping or pretending to be human.

Iker stares at the bowl in front of him. To eat is to human. To err is.

Xabi has finished his own bowl and is looking over. They're sitting at a counter of some Japanese noodle restaurant lit up with dim neon and fake accents. Iker takes a strand of ramen and puts it into his mouth. It tastes like metal. He pushes the bowl away.

"If you're not eating that," Xabi says, "then we may as well get this over with."

He removes a rectangle of white plastic from his pocket; it's no bigger than his palm. He slides it open and there's a round circle of glass inside, glass that he puts up against his face, one of his brown eyes. Iker looks at him, unblinking.

"Recite your baseline."

"Carve from stone and dream a barrow for the poet on waters of fountains that weep and whisper and weep and whisper and weep for eternity. At its dusty and sad ending, the day."

"Have you ever been swept away by a flood? Water."

"Water."

"What would you do if you were drowning? Water."

"Water."

"Who would you save if they were drowning? Water."

"Water."

Apparently satisfied, Xabi leans back in his seat and clicks the glass back into the rectangular device. "Constant. Good. How was your day?"

"Fine."

"Buffon likes you."

"I don't know." Iker shifts in his seat. "He seemed kind of strange, towards the end. I thought he was okay with – my kind, but then I think he was scared."

Xabi smiles.

Iker hasn't been alive too long, but he's downloaded both updates of the human interpretation data, and still this doesn't seem to fit into anything he's processed. People aren't supposed to smile when you say someone is scared. It's not even a warm smile; it's thin, sympathetic without wanting to be.

"Let me tell you a story," Xabi says. "About how you were born. You will forget I ever told this to you the moment I finish, but it will be retrievable via the following command prompt."

And then he says a word.

 

*

 

They've given him a place in one of the high-rise blocks just outside of Old Turin, what people with more civilised manners of speaking call the outskirts and what people who actually live there call the slums. Xabi picks past a discarded mattress and points Iker to a bolted metal door. It's got the word SKINJOB sprayed across it in red paint, like someone has heard of Iker's arrival. This is unsurprising.

"We can get someone to remove that for you," Xabi says.

"That's all right," Iker says.

It's a standard apartment, the kind Iker remembers not-growing up in, except this has a smaller corridor and smells funny, like it's just been disinfected. There are only two side doors – one to the bathroom and one to the kitchen. The walls are painted white and the corridor opens straight into the living room. Living room. Room for living. Room for the living. Iker laughs.

The far end of the room is all window, either good for watching other people or good for other people watching him. Sofa, at the side, that folds out to a bed. Chest of drawers next to that. Small television screen opposite. Table in the middle. There's a box on the wall that's stamped with the Wallace logo. Xabi removes it from the wall, almost delicately.

"There's a mirror in the bathroom," he says, nodding once. The automated door slides shut behind him without so much as a _click._

Iker walks into the bathroom. It's cramped, white again, a sink and a tub and a toilet. Iker puts his hands on the edges of the sink, one left and one right, perfectly symmetrical. He looks up.

The first thing he sees is his jaw. Square, almost, arcing to meet his ear. His face is flat and wide. His nose is the only sharp part of him, jutting out of his face. Pale skin covers the bone structure. His brow is heavy over his brown eyes; they've given him lines besides his lips and on his forehead, to tell people that he is thirty years old. He looks perfectly ordinary. A perfectly ordinary thirty-year-old.

Not yet twenty-four hours. He falls to his knees and is sick in the toilet.

 

*

 

Dreams are implanted in him too, he knows. Nothing he does is without explanation. _Robot_ comes from _roboti_ comes from _rabota_ , an old Slavonic word, meaning servitude. And when you serve you have no mind of your own; you make no choices. So he dreams what Xabi's company makes him dream, what other people put in his head because he is _robot_ , _roboti, rabota._

This is what he dreams of: the sea, neverending and vast, from the window of a bus he is sitting in. He is either five years old or ninety. There is no sea in Madrid, so he's on the coast of Spain, and there are other people on the bus, on the same journey. Perhaps they are his teammates.

There is some singing. This is how he knows it's a dream – there is no more singing, nowadays, except maybe in football stadiums. But here in the bus they are singing. _Llevo tu_ _camiseta_ , sings the voice, _pegada al corazón._ He looks out of the window, at the sea, at the calming back-forth of the waves, imagines himself wading all the way in until the water is above his head and he is drowning. White-tipped froth that weeps and whispers. _Los días que tu juegas, son todo lo que soy._

*

 

"Good morning," Gigi says.

Iker likes his voice. There's a bit of a rumble to it, deep and charming but also solemn. Perhaps his sensors are simply starting to get better. Perhaps it is, aesthetically, just a nice voice.

He introduced Iker to the team just before going out as _the new boy_. Iker pretended to commit all their names to memory as if he doesn't already know them. A few had thrown him and then Gigi sharp looks, but if Gigi noticed, he had not commented. Iker ignores them; he doesn't have to listen to anyone but Gigi, so this suits him fine.

They are outside. Iker is glad that it isn't the nuclear wasteland of France, and that here at least there is fresh air and he can look up to see the sky without a slick pane of glass. The pitch never fails to amaze him. "One of the last," Gigi declares in a tone between pride and affection. "Now clubs mostly train in the same stadium they play in, but we do it right here. We respect the stadium as it should be respected."

"Why," Iker begins, and then stops himself. Gigi looks over at him and grins lazily.

"No. Ask questions. I don't know why they wrote you so in love with a club when you're a replicant, so it must be hard for you. Ask. It'll help."

"Why do you need to respect the stadium?"

Gigi looks at the football tucked under his arm. "For the game," he says. "And for them." 

He tilts his head to where the people are standing. Ragged, many with their faces darkened from the pollution of the electric mills. The lowlife scum of humanity. The ones who didn't have enough money to make it off world. Standing and staring at Gigi and his team like they're saviours, come to pull them out of their pits, their humdrum nightmares.

"For them," Iker repeats.

They press their faces to the fence around the grass. Many of them are children, wearing clothes far too big. Iker acknowledges their curious gazes towards him with a polite, blank face. Gigi hums.

"And those who come after," he says. "Now. On the line, like last time. Knees bent. Palms out. Don't look at me. Look at the ball. Watch the ball. Guard the goalposts with your life. You are its first and last defence. You have turned your back on it, and now your legs and head and heart must hold."

 

*

 

"Why did you want to be a goalkeeper?"

They’re in the showers. Iker has a towel wrapped around him – with no prior concept of personal space he’d been walking around buck naked until someone had hissed in grudging disapproval and found him something – and he’s sitting next to Gigi, who’s drying out his dank hair.

Gigi’s reaction is automatic. "When I was little, I watched the world cup, and after Italy, Cameroon were the team of my heart," he says, and immediately Iker associates this with many of the interviews he’s done over the years, down to the same inflections and phrasing. "I saw Thomas N’Kono, the Cameroon goalkeeper. He was mythical. I watched him and decided to become a goalkeeper."

"No."

Both of them look surprised at the vehemence of this statement. Iker blinks, curls his hands into fists beside him, like he doesn’t know what to do with them.

"I mean."

Baseline. Baseline. Baseline.

"Why did you want to be a goalkeeper?"

Gigi is quiet. Iker looks at the door to the showers; outside the fans must still be clustered, waiting. He tilts his head questioningly.

"No," Gigi says. A little regretfully, Iker thinks, or maybe it’s just his sensors picking up the wrong emotion. "Not them. Not only them."

"Then what?"

"I liked having things." Gigi grins. It’s the same wide-toothed smile again. Iker finds himself smiling back, without knowing why. It feels like the first time he cried and the saline spilled from his face and didn’t stop even when he asked it to. "I liked having the – bag. The kit, the boots. Not so much owning things, but having them, showing that I was a part of this, whatever this is."

One of eleven. There’s something on the horizon, something just out of reach.

"Part of this," Iker repeats.

"You don’t explain it," Gigi says. "You just feel it in your soul."

Iker looks down at his chest. He’s wearing the same black shirt that Gigi gave to him on the first day. He hasn’t had to clean it, because the instruction manual in his head says that Nexus 9s don’t get dirty. There’s nothing written on the shirt the way there is the J for JUVENTUS stitched into Gigi’s.

"I don’t think I have a soul," he says.

 

*

 

He walks back. It isn't a short walk, but he likes the peace and quiet; he winds his way through the parts of the city still preserved, as if someone thought to preserve them, aimed the bombs purposely clear. He likes that. Someone having the presence of mind to say _this. This is worth._

One of the bridges across the Po is still standing. The Po itself is long gone, dammed up to stop the city sinking like the rest of the country. Only dry riverbed and cracked dust. Iker steps across the stone as if it might break under his feet. He thinks of Madrid, the city he's never been to yet the city he remembers, white columns of his childhood steadily disintegrating. The statue of the woman outside the palace and the way she had been toppled by the anarchists. Fire and flames against cold marble. 

The stone doesn't crack. Iker crosses the bridge and puts a palm against one of the cast iron railings that line the sides of the bridge. The oldest bridge in Old Turin, his supercomputer-brain tells him, built in the nineteenth century, although the commemorative Napoleonic coins were removed shortly after the war. Sold as pieces of silver.

They'd kept the stadium, in Madrid, only the Bernabeu, Perez brokering some kind of financial deal. The rest had been razed. Iker remembers-not-remembers going to the site of the Calderon, breathing in the flecks of carbon. How do you kill a football club? Something living, breathing, real?

You wait. For the stories to end. The songs to sing themselves quiet.

 

*

 

Xabi is waiting for him in his apartment when he gets back. Iker sits down, obediently, without Xabi having to ask. Xabi clicks his baseline device open and peers into it.

"Recite your baseline."

"Carve from stone and dream a barrow for the poet on waters of fountains that weep and whisper and weep and whisper and weep for eternity. At its dusty and sad ending, the day."

At its dusty and sad ending. Iker blinks. He isn't supposed to.

"What is poetry? Poet."

"Poet."

"Has a poem ever made you feel things? Poet."

"Poet."

"What songs would you sing? Poet."

Songs – Iker pauses a beat too long. "Poet."

Xabi's expression doesn't change, but Iker notes the way his eyes flick momentarily downward. Iker notices a lot of things. He doesn't know if it's his programming or something else; maybe goalkeepers are meant to be observant. He makes sure his own expression doesn't change, either.

"Careful," Xabi says.

 

*

 

He watches Gigi this time. They're playing five-a-side and Gigi had told him with his rumble of a laugh, _maybe I had better take this one._ So, obediently, he sits by the side where the benches are and watches. He's not seen Gigi play before. Not really. Gigi moves like he's a spring. Coiled, most of the time, until the ball comes to him and his goal, then it's like something let him go. He hurtles through the air and claws the ball away, lands, brushes himself off. Without effort. Iker searches through the files in his brain until he comes across an image of a panther, sleek and muscled, keyed up and waiting to pounce. _Graceful_ is one of the words associated with it in the caption. Yes, Iker thinks.

His supercomputer-brain logs all of Gigi's movements, storing them away to be reproduced later. That's what replicants are meant to do, after all. Replicate.

"San Gigi," someone shouts. Iker snaps his head up to look at the rows of people crowded at the fence, again, pressing their grimy faces into the metal steel wire. Gigi sees them too; he raises a hand and they cheer. Gigi smiles back, warm. There is something a little heartbreaking about it, Iker thinks, although he can't explain why. He doesn't really have a heart to break.

Iker watches as the match ends and the team jog off the field, some of them turning to the people at the fence and clapping. Claudio pats the badge-crest-logo and that gets another tired cheer.

"You were very good," he tells Gigi, falling into step besides him towards the showers.

"Thank you," Gigi says, amused again. "Did you learn anything?"

"Yes." Iker frowns. "I think."

"What?"

Iker plays back Gigi's movements. Lithe and cool, positioned technically perfectly, everything that Iker can do, as a replicant. They're built to be stronger and faster and better.

But there's an edge, something he can't put his finger on. Something that maybe, he thinks, you need to grow into; maybe you need years and years before it happens to you. The way the people had looked, the way the team had looked back at them. The way Gigi plays like he puts his heart into it. What an old, strange phrase. To put your heart into it.

"That you have a heart," he says out loud.

Gigi tilts his head and looks at him, still half-smiling, but sharper now.

"We all have hearts," he says.

"Yes, but." Iker shrugs. "When mine breaks, it breaks – down. There's a unit in my head that's telling it to pump. When the unit stops then it stops. And I have to go for replacement, or retirement, or something. But yours just – breaks."

Gigi doesn't say anything at first, and Iker begins to wonder whether he's said the wrong thing when suddenly Gigi has put an arm around him. It isn't quite an embrace. It's the way a teammate might hold another teammate, a kindness that begets understanding.

Gigi's very warm. He remembers that.

"Finally you begin to understand," he murmurs into Iker's ear. His breath is also very warm and it sends a burst of electrons through Iker's skin. "Football. Sometimes your heart breaks and sometimes your heart is so full you don't know what to do with it. That's why we need to play."

Iker says, "You're so grand that sometimes I don't think you know what you're saying."

He remembers that he likes Gigi's laugh, too.

 

*

 

"When I was a boy," Gigi says, "We used to live in this long, golden house. Lots of windows and doors and people always coming and going. I shared a room with three other kids. Good kids, I liked them. I was probably the worst apprentice any of the coaches had ever seen. I'd showboat all the time. I'd do things they expressly told me not to do. Scala tells me not to eat any junk food? I order a gelato the size of my head. One day Larini comes to me and it's like a bolt of lightning. Try to change, he says. Otherwise, go home. So I chose to stay. And change. And that's it, you know?"

 

*

 

 

This is:

  1. Match day.
  2. Not real.



He is eleven years old. He knows that this is a dream because he's never been to Spain, and yet here he is, shining marble and smooth cobblestone. It feels like he's been here all his life. This is some memory making, he marvels. Everything that ought to be recalled he does. The people around him are a lot taller than he is, shoving and jostling their way around the crowded streets. Some of them have scarves, others have flags draped around their shoulders. He can't make out all of their faces, but he thinks that he knows them. In their own way.

The stadium rises above them all, columned, badge-crest-logo emblazoned on the front. They are singing, again, the same song.

Take a breath. The hum of the city is sweet in your ears.

 

*

 

"I'm not yet a month old," he tells himself under his breath that comes harsh and fast, bolting up straight from bed and sitting there rocking. "I'm not a month old."

Why is it important that he remembers this? _The Nexus 9_ , says the standard Wallace voice in his head, maybe Xabi's and maybe not, _comes with pre-programmed memories and experiences to help your replicant adapt easily after inception. You may choose to keep them aware of their status or assimilate them as humans._

It's easier for everyone if he stays aware, he thinks. It's easier for him.

He drags himself to the bathroom. Tilts his face up and stares at the mirror. Runs his fingers over his jawline. He's not crying, which he's grateful for. He shifts his fingers to his throat and feels some kind of a pulse, thumpthumpthump. Exactly like a real boy. Warm like Gigi.

He takes his eyes away from the mirror and looks out to where the vidphone is, hanging off the far wall. They gave him everyone's number just in case; he could ring up Gigi for no reason, just to talk to him, if he was awake. Listen to his voice.

In the end he doesn't. He goes back to the bed and sits on it and looks out the window, the same full-length ones that they have in the living room. He thinks of what the crowd had said earlier in the day: _San Gigi._ Saint. Thinks what the _fuck_ does that mean, this archaic language for religions that no longer exist, deification in a world where people just wanted to be the same.

 _San Gigi._ He turns it around in his mouth. Do not be afraid to become the saints of the new millennium.

"San Iker," he says, out loud. And again. "San Iker. San Iker."

 

*

 

Goalkeeping, Gigi says, is about uncertainty. Reacting to things you can't predict. No matter how much you practice, when it's the eighty-ninth minute of a game and you're stranded with a striker bearing down on you, there's always the chance you'll miss.

"Then why be a goalkeeper?" asks Iker, who has never had anything but control, whose entire life has been mapped out like a graph.

Gigi grins and presses his hand into Iker's chest where the crest is.

"Football is enchantment," he says. "A spell. Fragile. Anything can happen. In that eighty-ninth minute when you're stranded and deciding which way to go, there's something that clicks in your head that tells you _do this_ , like the needle of a compass that suddenly settles into place. And that moment, before you know whether you've gone the right way. That's when you're alive."

 

*

 

He goes to training, he trains, he walks home. Sometimes he gets the feeling that someone's watching him, but when he looks back there isn't anyone in the street. All is quiet, as it should be.

Technically he's – perfect. He replays all of Gigi's acrobatics with even more precision, he's stronger in stopping the ball, he can jump all the way to the corner of the goal. He stops all of the shots that they throw towards him. All of them. Gigi sits on the grass by the side, saying nothing. There's a steeliness about his gaze. Iker takes it as a compliment. 

If this is all that training was supposed to do, he's finished it. Real Madrid will have the greatest goalkeeper in the world.

Gigi laughs when Iker tells him this, although Iker doesn't know why. "Not yet," he says.

They're walking out of the complex, Gigi ambling towards his spinner. Iker tilts his head and looks at him.

"Why not?"

"Where do you live?" Gigi asks. He's stopped in front of his spinner. "I'll drop you off."

No, I can walk, is what Iker wants to say, but what comes out is his address in full. Gigi looks like he's trying not to laugh.

"I forgot you have to tell the truth all the time. Must be exhausting."

"No one asks me enough questions for it to be exhausting."

"Hm." Gigi's reached the spinner and clicks a key for the door on the passenger side to open. Iker slides in. His spinner is a lot smaller than Xabi's corporation one, a two-seater that looks about a year past its end-of-service date. The leather that covers his seat is almost certainly imitation and scratched in too many places. Gigi whistles a short, sharp tune as he throws his kit into the backseat and turns to boot up the spinner. It takes a while for the interface to load up, old as it is, and even then the meters glitch every few seconds.

"I could probably fix that for you," Iker says, as Gigi inputs his address.

"Yeah? Talented with your hands in more ways than one."

"All Nexus 9s come inbuilt with basic engineering skillsets. It doesn't look that hard."

Gigi drums his fingers on the steering wheel. Long, strong fingers, Iker thinks. His own were made strong.

"Why did you want to be a goalkeeper?"

The question takes him by surprise. Iker blinks, not entirely sure what to say. Surely Gigi knows – "they built me. They wanted a replicant goalkeeper."

Gigi shakes his head. "No."

"No?"

"You have memories, don't you?"

"They aren't mine."

"They're as good as yours."

"I don't see the point of pretending to be something I'm not."

"You're not pretending anything," Gigi rumbles. "Come on. You were a kid once. Why did you want to be a goalkeeper?"

"I've never been a child." Gigi doesn't understand. Iker rocks forward with confusion, wondering if he'll start to short circuit if they keep going down this route. "My inception date was a month ago. I'm only a month old. I have no memories of my own, except what's happened since then. Everything else is false. I've never been to Spain. I – "

Gigi kisses him.

It isn't any kind of great revelation. It's hard and fast and Iker would almost have thought it hadn't happened, if not for the aftertaste of Gigi on his lips, strange as it burns.

"We choose to make things real," Gigi says, laconic, leaning back like nothing's happened. "Why did you want to be a goalkeeper?"

Iker thinks of Madrid. Madrid and the banners and the way his father who was not his father had held his hand.

"I don't know," he says.

Gigi smiles.

"Better."

 

*

 

They land outside Iker's apartment block and Iker gets out, ignoring the dubious stares of two passers-by. Gigi's spinner might be a rust-bucket, but it's still a spinner and Iker gets the feeling this neighbourhood doesn't see very many of those. He puts a hand on the open door and leans back in.

"Thanks for the ride," he says.

"You're welcome," Gigi says.

It's almost dinnertime. Iker can feel himself getting hungry, and he's sure Gigi's hungry too. He has some protein packs upstairs in his kitchen.

"Why is there still football?" he asks.

Gigi shakes his head. "Casillas, lighten up, OK?" he laughs. "Not everything has to be so serious."

Iker finds himself frowning. "I'm not always serious."

"I'll see you tomorrow," Gigi says, "unless you insist on standing that close as I take off, in which case it was nice knowing you."

Iker grins back and takes a step towards the block. Gigi closes the door and jets back up into the sky, which is now a distant, dull red. There's too much iron in the air. And the androids, Iker thinks, shall inherit the earth.

 

*

 

He pours out a protein pack and has a meal that doesn't taste of anything, even though it says chicken soup on the front. It's raining outside; not the nuclear rain of Paris, just good old-fashioned water. Fountains. Weep. He perches on the edge of the bed and turns on the television.

"Run an old Real Madrid game," he says.

The television whirrs for a moment, then retrieves a game Iker recognises immediately as the Deportivo game, three-one, 2029. Zidane scoring. The goalkeeper's wearing a kit with _I. CASILLAS_ and _1_ on the back, and when he turns around it's Iker's face exactly.

Iker knows that it's only his memories that are being projected onto the game. Anyone else watching it would see something different; he wonders, briefly, who the man before him was, how much they've changed. Whether the people in Madrid really remember him. If they care enough to.

Video-Iker lets in a goal. It's embarrassing, but it doesn't – somehow it still isn't the same as what he thinks Gigi is trying to say.

"Run an interview from Gigi Buffon," he says.

The screen flickers and changes. Gigi's on the screen in a black shirt, a microphone in front of him, face gleaming in the harsh stadium lights. He's crying, Iker realises. He doesn't lift his eyes to meet the camera or the interviewer. Once, twice, he puts his hand to his face to wipe the tears away.

"I'm not sorry for myself but all of Italian football," he's saying on the screen. His voice echoes through the room like Iker's listening through a tin can. "We weren't able to express ourselves at our best. We lacked the composure to score. I am sorry that my last match with the national team has coincided with the failure to reach the World Cup."

The interviewer says something that Iker tunes out. His eyes are fixed on Gigi's face, frowning, still looking down. "Surely there is a future," Gigi says. "Because we have pride and strength. We win and we lose together as a group. We are a hardheaded and diehard people. After a fall, we know how to rise again."

Iker is quiet for a while.

"Run a video on Calciopoli," he says.

"The mere mention 'Calciopoli' stirs a variety of emotions," says the unseen narrator as animations play out on the screen. "Commonly referred to as a 'match fixing scandal', it implicated a number of high profile teams including: Juventus, AC Milan, Fiorentina, and Lazio among others. Juventus was stripped of two titles and relegated to Serie B."

"Run an interview from Gigi Buffon on Calciopoli."

"Hi, I'm Lorenzo from Parma and here's my question," says a ten-year-old. "Why did you decide to go down to Serie B with Juve?"

"Hi Lorenzo," says Gigi on the screen, smiling, fatherly. "Say hello to Parma for me when you go home. It has a special place in my heart." Parma's all gone now, of course, sunk by the Arctic meltdown two years ago. Iker never asked Gigi about that. "I chose to drop down because I thought of you guys. I thought about you because I really believe at times you need to stop talking and take action."

Iker turns the television off and gets up to fold out the bed. He lies under the thin sheets and stares up at the ceiling, which is dark grey and is already peeling off in places. I would stay at Real Madrid if they were relegated, he thinks, because I am equipment owned by them.

Us. We. I'm not sorry for myself. After a fall, we know how to rise again.

 

*

 

"Can I have a pair of your shorts?"

Gigi looks at him like he's crazy.

"Why would you want a pair of my shorts?"

"There's only one reason why anyone would want someone else's shorts," says Claudio in passing, somehow both prim and salacious at the same time.

"That's what people do," Iker says. "I watched some videos. Swap things, ask for things, because you admire the person."

"Yeah?" Gigi grins. "You admire me?"

"You're very good," Iker says. Then, remembering what Gigi said about not being too serious, "I'm still better, of course."

"Ha!" Gigi rummages through his locker and grabs a pair of shorts, tossing it to Iker, who catches it like he would a football. "We’ll see, Casillas. Maybe the shorts will give you magical powers."

"They've certainly helped you last this long, old man," Iker returns, warming to his theme.

Gigi smiles at him indulgently and turns back to his locker, pausing in mid-movement and squinting. "What do I get?"

"What?"

"You said swap, my friend. What do I get in return?"

Iker looks around, blank. Everything that he owns is Juventus's or Wallace's. He'd say _myself_ , but that sounds a bit of a joke too far.

"When Madrid give you your first jersey," Gigi says, "with your name and number. You can give that to me."

"They'll think I lost it," Iker snorts. "It's not a very promising start."

"Ask them for another one."

"What excuse should I give?"

"Stray dog ran away with it."

"There aren't any more stray dogs," Iker points out. Gigi rolls his eyes.

"So make up a better excuse," he drawls, tilting his head towards the spinner lot. "Coming?"

 

*

 

Iker doesn't ask Gigi to come up, and Gigi doesn't suggest anything. "Did you really want my shorts because you admire me?" he asks just before he takes off.

"Yes, of course." He tilts his head. "Why?"

"No reason." Gigi shrugs. It's almost embarrassed, except Iker knows by now that he doesn't do embarrassed. "Just wondering."

He guns his engine. Iker pauses at the lot for a moment, following the sporadic, stuttering puffs of the spinner's engine with his gaze.

When he gets to the door of his apartment he notes that there's a new, second SKINJOB under the first one. It wouldn't hurt them to be more original, he thinks mildly.

After dinner he steps into the bathroom. The mirror needs cleaning, the way he doesn't. He rubs at it half-heartedly with the hem of his shirt.

Nothing about his face has changed, even two months on; he hasn't needed a haircut because his hair doesn't grow, and his pale skin is still smooth but for the pre-determined lines that crease it. They'd stopped allowing the aging process after the Nexus 8s, Xabi had explained the last time he'd been here for a baseline. Figured it was easier if replicants didn't grow old. Same-sized parts and longer years of service. Yes, Iker. You will have this face forever.

He steps away from the mirror and looks at his hands instead, large, strong. Maybe he'll play forever, too. He'll never have a last match with a national team, or a last match with Real Madrid, because he'll always be perfect. Gigi's going to leave Juventus next summer and fade into something like memory. Iker will have left by then. He'll be where he's supposed to be, the once-gleaming city of white.

Gigi's shorts are still in his kit bag. He takes them out and takes off his own, pulls these on. They don't feel very much different. No magical powers, it seems. They're just a pair of shorts.

A pair that used to belong to Gigi and now belongs to him. The only thing that does, Iker thinks. All I have in the world, to my name: hand-me-downs from my idol. My favourite goalkeeper. My favourite.

He curls up tight as he goes to sleep, hands nestled in the fabric, as if a thread of something that doesn't really exist has tied them there.

 

*

 

_Recite your baseline._

Carve from stone and dream a barrow for the poet on waters of fountains that weep and whisper and weep and whisper and weep for eternity. At its dusty and sad ending, the day.

_What would you whisper to someone who loves you? Whisper._

Whisper.

_Would you cry if you lost someone you loved? Weep._

Weep.

_What's it like to be in love? Dream._

Dream.

_Do you love Gigi Buffon?_

 

*

 

He wakes up.

He's not in the Wallace room and he's not doing a baseline test and he isn’t going to be retired for failing it, not like Gigi will at the end of summer with grey lines and a sidelong smile. Everything’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay. Take a breath. Breathe.

The sun is cleaving through the red-iron dust, shards that fall outside of his window. Iker gets out of bed and presses his face to the glass, looks down at the quiet Turin suburbs. A pilot programme, Xabi had said. You’re the first replicant to ever play football. Isn’t that something?

Iker feels something jig through his chest. He doesn’t know what – his breath stopping, a punch to his solar plexus – and just as quickly, it’s gone.

All is quiet. It’s Sunday, Iker realises, starts to laugh. No one’s on the streets this early in the morning on a Sunday. Just a man in his shorts and the clouds that roll on quietly above, dappled almost golden when they catch the light.

 

*

 

"Run an old Real Madrid game."

The screen flickers before it pulls out the Champions' League semi-final fifteen years ago, back when there were still enough teams to play. The teams are lining up in the middle of the pitch. Iker catches Gigi looking into the camera, shaggy-haired and with only the barest trace of beard. He looks awfully young.

Madrid lose the match, eventually; Gigi saves a penalty and the man who would be Iker lets in too many goals. The final whistle goes. Screaming, crying, faces in hands. Iker feels something sharp in his chest. Video-Iker takes off his gloves.

He's remembering something different, now. Doesn't know if it was put into him or if he's making it up as he goes along. He isn't supposed to remember things they didn't give him, is he.

Somehow, from the opposite ends of the pitch, they meet in the middle. Gigi gives Iker a thumbs' up, and Iker puts his hand on Gigi's chest, without words. His back is turned to the camera.

He remembers talking to Gigi, even though this didn't really happen. Saying, well done. Good game. His heart and eyes are burning. He thinks of Gigi, an arm around him, remembers the closeness that he'd felt just standing there. Two colours amidst the black and white. What was it Gigi had said, the first day, when he'd asked why Gigi wasn't with the rest of the team? I'm with you.

 

*

 

"Hey," Gigi says one day. "Will you come to the match?"

It's already August. Iker's been alive for three months. Nothing very much has changed since then; he's gotten better with words, can hold his own in the dressing room. Functions like he knows what he's doing, even though some bits he still fumbles. The first time he used an emoji they hadn't stopped ribbing him for days.

Once or twice he almost forgets. Almost. Xabi looks at his baseline and says nothing.

"Am I invited?" Iker grins. He could probably ask for a spinner of his own, but somehow strangely he hasn't acted upon that. They're heading home at lunch instead because of the game tonight. Gigi gives him one of his looks.

"No. We don't invite – " Gigi pulls a face – "Madridistas. You'll have to sneak in on pain of death."

"Doesn't sound worth it."

"You get to see me play."

"Even worse."

"You get to see Claudio dressed down."

"No turtlenecks? Intriguing."

Gigi laughs and presses a ticket chip into his hand. "Starts at seven."

 

*

 

PSG had flown in yesterday; Iker had seen them briefly, although he hadn't said hello. An exhibition match. Spoils to be earned. The Blackout and the revolution that came after had forced the prices of football tickets to tumble, so the oligarchs had decided on the next best things – more games. More commodification. Fake grass. Pay cuts. Pre-Eastham rulings back in full force, at least before England had drowned. Now you only played because you wanted to. Iker suspects all the replicants are a part of this; Perez won't have to treat him like he's real. Play for them forever just because they can keep you there. There's a reason, he thinks with a twist in his mouth, all his memories point to him wanting to stay.

The roads in North Turin are more unfamiliar. He picks over the gravel as he walks, carefully, like he’s afraid of breaking something. The air around him is still, without wind. He can almost see dust particles hanging suspended in the air. Beneath his feet the clouds gather in shadows, early tonight.

He looks up. Not clouds. Spinners – hundreds of them, all in varying states of rust bucket, headed the same way as he is. Some wavering unsteadily like they’re going to crash, others with their lights flickering, almost all of them painted with the black-white stripes of _Bianconeri_. A whining in the distance; thin, stubborn horns, drivers not jamming them in anger but as if they needed a way to shout to the world.

In front of him, then. People materialising out of the dust. The ragged people of the electric mills who stood at the fence watching, dark and dirt and grime, trooping steadily forward. A few more steps and Iker is caught up in the crowd. Most of them are humans, as far as he can make out. The ones left behind while the rest of their species conquered worlds.

Here they are. Singing. Black and white shirts. Some he recognises – _Dybala 10, Higuain 9, Marchisio 8_ – some less so – _Del Piero 10, Nedved 11, Trezeguet 17._ All words that seem to mean something even now, still. Like nothing’s changed in two hundred years. He catches sight of a few _Buffon 1_ s in a riot of his own colours.

You see the tip of it first, walking down the Strada Altessano. The two-legged main column that juts into the sky, eighty-four metres tall, barely visible. Then further down to the bowl, tunnels and trusses and the pitch itself. Like a cauldron. Bright, white light spills out of the open roof, slipping into the haze and turning a murky grey that seems to pulse and wink you in. Iker looks around; with everyone who comes into sight of the stadium there seems to be a ripple. Their faces are almost serene.

Here they are. Singing. _È la Juve, storia di quel che sarò_ _._ The words don’t feed through his built-in translator and Iker blinks, momentarily confused. It’s never happened before. Even all his training-mates with their rapidfire Italian he’s always been able to handle. He strains harder. They sing louder. _Quando fischia l'inizio_ , _inizia quel sogno che sei_. The stadium gleams before them, like the sun.

Juve – he holds on to the word he knows. Then, slowly: tale of a great love. Story of what I will be. When the match starts, the dream you are starts too.

It’s very maudlin, even for humans. He wonders if they know what they’re singing. If they believe in it. Or if it’s something beyond this.

They’re at the foot of the stadium, columns stretched into the iron clouds. He presses the chip into the gantry and the gate slides open in welcome. Gigi got him a ticket in the Curva Sud and he walks up the stairs with the rest of them, inches into his seat. Flags and scarves. He finds himself thinking of the Bernabeu, even when he shouldn't be.

Here is:

  1. The lights focused on the pitch. Somehow the air in the stadium is cleaner, clearer; perhaps they've rigged up a filtering system on the roof, but there are no more particles, and Iker sees only the hard cross-shadows of the players as they walk across the grass. The boys he trains with both far away and also close enough to touch.
  2. The faces around the Curvas that blend into the same thing, the more you look. One thing. Iker thinks and thinks and thinks of a way to describe this, but none of it works. No more words. Just the shoulders pressed against him.
  3. Not a stadium, really.
  4. Gigi at the goal, one gloved hand on the post, looking up. Iker's never seen him like this before. _San Gigi_ , the crowd call to him. Saint, saviour.
  5. _Per sempre sarà._ It will live forever. He wants to believe that. He wants to believe.



 

*

 

Iker dreams that night of things he isn't meant to dream of. The shirt, the stadium, the nameless faces. You can't have one without the other. You can't have one without any of them, is what he's been told. Or not told. Is what he knows, he knows this, knows it in his heart, has always known. Has always felt. To play football is to feel. Not to explain. To play is to weep and whisper for eternity. To play is to live forever, in memories, stories. To play is –

 

*

 

"Recite your baseline."

"Why?"

Xabi blinks at him.

"What?"

"Why should I recite baseline?"

"Because you are a replicant," Xabi says. "Recite command log for GK1-8.1."

"My liaison Wallace officer is: Xabier Alonso.  I report to the following: Florentino Perez. Jose Mourinho. Gianluigi Buffon. Do you wish to update the commanding log?"

The words come choked out of his mouth. He glares at Xabi, fists balling, wanting to punch him. Your programme does not allow for you to harm others. Xabi smiles thinly.

"Okay. Let's do this instead."

He slicks the lens back into the white rectangle. Leans back in his seat, folds his hands over his kneecap, and looks steadily at Iker. The expression in his eyes doesn't change. God, Iker thinks. He's exactly the same.

"What's your baseline?"

Xabi is quiet for a while. "Was it Buffon?" he asks, eventually.

"It was a combination of things," Iker says, which is the best he can get without lying.

"I told them they should have gone with a journeyman," Xabi says. He looks down at his fingers. His voice is laced with disappointment, although Iker doesn't think it's directed at him. "Someone who just taught you how to play properly, without ideas. But they wanted him. They have never understood all of this – narrative bullshit."

"And you do?" Iker asks.

Xabi meets his eye. There's a flash of something across his face; a twitch in his jaw, in his cheek.

"I knew someone who did."

Iker wants to say: then you know that playing football isn't about baseline tests. Then you know that this experiment is over even before it begins.

"They want this because they want control." Xabi smiles again. His smile is back to normal, clean and bright and impossibly cool. "You know. People and their emotions are liabilities in the transfer market. Spats aren't good for public image. Perez wanting to sell you and you not wanting to leave."

"I thought the point of my memories was to make me stay forever."

"The point is to make you play like you want to stay forever. Nothing to stop memories from changing."

Iker thinks of the boys on the beach. _Los días que tu juegas, son todo lo que soy._ The bus ride along the sea. _Parece que fue ayer cuando con nueve años vestí por primera vez la camiseta del Real Madrid y vi cumplido mi sueño._

Iker thinks of Gigi. The rumble of his voice, his laugh, the warmth of the crook of his arm. Things that you can't pick up through articles and interviews. Things he will forget, that will disappear, like tears in rain.

"Do remember," Xabi says, slipping the rectangle back into his pocket of his immaculately-creased suit, "that you have a number, not a soul."

He means, of course, for it to hurt. Iker stares resolutely back at him. His body is controlled by a supercomputer and all he has to tell it to do is not to react. So he doesn't – sits, calmly, waits. Xabi leans forwards, intent on something or other, so close Iker can see grey flecks in the brown of his irises. He opens his mouth to say something, then bares his teeth instead. Stands up.

It takes a while for Iker to realise that he's crying. It's the same uncontrollable out-of-body experience as always, saline solution leaking out of ducts that can't be stoppered. The tears leak into his mouth and he tastes them, salty, a taste he knows only out of a manual. Humans cry when they are sad. When they feel pain. He licks the salt off his lips and thinks: am I sad, do I feel, what the fuck does it all mean?

 

*

 

"Run an old Real Madrid game. Before I started."

It's a game against Hércules. A three-nil win this time, Iker is a fifteen-year-old who isn't really fifteen and he's sitting in a stadium that isn't really there. Everything around him is exactly the same. Everything around him has been the same for fifteen years. You are as much a part of a football club as it is a part of you; as much as you see these people in the seats next to you every game, every week. He was born here. He will die here. Hala Madrid. To play football is to feel, not to explain, to play is to love.

"Run the last Real Madrid game I started."

Getafe. 7-3. He's got the armband around his bicep, he's wearing an orange shirt. He's looking up at the crowd. He laughs as he pats someone else on the back, and his boots get that much heavier as he walks towards the goalposts. He lifts his hands above his head. His gloves are still on. He applauds, and all at once he feels like he's in an empty stadium, on an empty stage, taking the last bow of a curtain call.

 _San Iker_ , says the television. _San Iker._

 

*

 

"Congratulations. Hope the celebrations were enjoyable."

"It was a pre-season game against PSG," Gigi snorts. "Congratulate me again when we win the league."

"Someone's confident," Iker says, grinning lazily back at him.

"Someone's good." Gigi's voice is fond as he looks at the boys on the other side of the field. His boys. Iker follows his gaze.

"You must be bored hanging around me all the time."

"No one else understands me like you do."

It's a deadpan, throwaway remark, but Iker is met by a sudden curious flash of honesty. At its dusty and sad ending, the day; odd-coloured shirt, number one, gloved hands on the goalposts that dwarf him and him alone.

"Get another goalkeeper."

Gigi makes a face. "There's this new boy coming in soon," he shrugs. "Woj-something. Ridiculous name. He'll take over when I retire."

They're silent for a bit.

"I bet you won't retire," Iker says. "I bet you'll play for the next twenty years."

Gigi laughs. "I'll retire when you do."

"Never, then."

"I'll play till I'm hobbling around the pitch on a little walking cane."

"They'll upgrade me so that I can keep both my hands free."

"That's cheating."

"Everyone's going to be a replicant in the future, that'll level the playing field."

"Sometimes I wish you wouldn't remember that," Gigi says.

 

*

 

Gigi drives him home.

Iker looks down as the spinner flies over half of Turin. He can just make out the grids of the streets under the dust, deserted at this time of day. The season starts in a week. They’ve not mentioned when he’s going to go back to Madrid. Going to go to Madrid for the first time in his life, all of three months long and already too much.

He’s going to miss this place, he thinks, if he can miss anything. He's going to miss it like he misses Madrid, without ever having set foot there.

The spinner lands and Iker doesn’t get out. Instead he says, "I can make dinner, if you’d like."

"Why not," Gigi smiles at him, indulgent. "I’ve always wondered what stomach flu felt like."

Iker scoffs. "I make excellent protein soup. I can read instructions and everything."

Gigi winds his hand around Iker’s arm and doesn’t let go. Just holds it there, still smiling. "No, let’s have a proper meal. You have a kitchen? I know a place where we can get real veg."

"Of course you know a place."

"I’m Gigi Buffon," says Gigi Buffon, spreading an arm as if to encompass the city. Bursts into a rumble of a laugh, and Iker knows what he’ll really miss.

 

*

 

It turns out to be this tiny shop two blocks out and they run back to the flat, boxes of fresh meat and pasta. _Real_ meat and pasta. Iker tucks his face into the shadow of his coat as he runs, carrying a secret that’s only his. _Take that,_ he thinks at the faceless Wallace Corporation and its synthetic food. He feels like a little boy with a chest of treasures he’s stolen from the grown-ups, giggling with delight and pride.

Gigi doesn’t say anything when he sees the SKINJOBS on the door. Iker leads him inside and shows him the kitchen and its long white strip of cabinet and stove. Old technology, but Gigi just rolls up his sleeves and whistles.

He’s a good cook, it turns out. Very soon the air is filled with the smell of herbs and garlic. Iker breathes it all in and feels almost heady; it’s nothing like he’s ever smelt before, since they wouldn’t have programmed this. Even fake-memories don’t allow for what most real humans can’t afford.

It’s only spaghetti and meatballs, but it isn’t holographic. Iker tucks into his food and it’s better than anything he’s ever, ever tasted.

He’s aware of Gigi watching him eat.

After dinner he does the dishes, methodical, while Gigi hums and wanders around the flat. "I can’t believe they took away your AI," he says disapprovingly, tapping the space on the wall where the Wallace box used to be. "Who do you talk to when you’re bored?"

And because Iker can’t tell a lie, he says, "you."

_Do you love Gigi Buffon?_

Gigi’s holding his shorts when Iker comes out of the kitchen. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, the television on, a Madrid game playing. Iker barely has to look before he knows that it was the game against Malaga away, three-all, Guti scoring the equaliser in the eightieth minute. Who the fuck is – you know this.

"I hope they’re comfortable," Gigi says, waving the shorts in the air.

"They’re too big for me," Iker laughs.

He sits down next to Gigi and looks at the television. He's taking a goal kick. He isn't half as good as Gigi is, this past person, whoever he was. Gigi must've known him. Iker doesn't want to ask.

Gigi kisses him then, which is just as well.

It isn't the same as the last kiss – his first kiss – they had. That one had almost been a challenge, a way to prove something, a dare. A rough swipe of lips but this is slow, casual almost, if there wasn't so much they were both projecting onto this. Iker breathes in and reaches up to put his hand around Gigi's shoulders. For some reason he's thinking of the game on the television, everybody in a heap, screaming, a tangle of arms and sweat and faces pushed into necks.

"Thanks for dinner," he says when they break apart, and Gigi bursts out laughing.

"It wasn't that good a dinner," he murmurs, sucking at the nape of Iker's neck. Iker has to bite off a something in his throat, curls his fingers into the fabric of Gigi's t-shirt. _He's too close_ , his brain tells him, wildly. Far too close – Gigi's everywhere, the stubble of his beard brushing Iker's collarbone, one hand running down Iker's back, the other hand in his hair, his knee pressing against Iker's leg insistently. _This isn't what you're built for_ , says the supercomputer in his brain, _this kind of proximity_ – but Gigi is smiling at him through half-lidded eyes and Iker feels a part of him shut down.

"Hey," Gigi says, almost lazy. "Stop thinking for once, okay? Stop thinking. Just let me take care of you."

He kisses Iker again, harder this time. Pushes him back onto the bed and helps him pull his shirt over his head. Gigi's own shirt comes off quickly, and then he's nosing down Iker's chest, laying kisses down to his crotch. His mouth is so awfully warm on bare skin. Iker gasps as Gigi pulls him out of his shorts and wraps a hand around him, thumb flicking up to drive him crazy. Maybe he says something here. He can barely hear himself.

He jerks the moment Gigi's lips touch the head of his cock, involuntary, like a fish fighting for breath on the deck of a boat. That's all they have now. Fish and too much water.   

Stop thinking. Stop thinking.

Gigi takes him full into his mouth and Iker fucks upwards, grinding his teeth. Everything is quiet except for the harsh, choked moans that come out of Iker's throat. He hadn't thought it would feel this good, or sad, or final. Hadn't thought he would feel.

He fucks Gigi's mouth until Gigi pulls off just before he comes, a moment of release that shudders through him. In a flurry of kisses and feverish skin they stumble around until they find a bottle amongst other things in one of the drawers Iker has never opened. "What the fuck," Iker says, and his face is probably such a mixture of horror and awe that Gigi starts laughing all over again.

The lube makes Gigi's fingers cold as he works Iker open, and Iker shifts onto his knees, eyes closed. There's a moment where he feels frozen, like a statue. Naked and pale in whatever moonlight sifts through the window. White marble. A woman, on a chariot drawn by lions. _I was once the glory of the palaestra_ _; I knew crowded doorways; thresholds were warm for me._

Gigi puts one hand on the curve of his spine and fucks him, and Iker bites his lip and begs himself to stop thinking. Begs his brain that doesn't belong to him. He focuses on Gigi, big warm hand. Goalkeeper's hand. The brief flashes of heat as Gigi thrusts into him, getting faster when Iker tells him to, some kind of mad, ragged, desperate dash to the finishing line. _At sunrise, I left my sleeping place._ Everything is burning, blinding white. Everything is dusty grid streets. Pleasure and pain and _Gigi, come on_ , _fuck me,_ _please,_ as if they haven't got any time left, and _what shall I now be called, part of myself, a man in barrenness?_

*

 

He showers and pulls on Gigi's shorts. He doesn't look himself in the mirror.

"Will you stay?" he asks, without clarifying what he means – here, tonight, forever – and Gigi leans down to kiss him again.

 

*

 

This time the dream is called wishful thinking.

They're meeting in the middle of the pitch again. Gigi is not that much older than Iker; maybe they're both in their early thirties. They smile and embrace. Cameras surround them. Flashing stadium lights. Gigi says _congratulations_ , so Iker assumes he's won the game. He says, _I'm sorry._ They both know he means it in a very specific context – I'm sorry you of all people had to lose – and Gigi rolls his shoulders back, easy.

It's just the two of them and the goalposts on the pitch. They both have the captain's armbands around their biceps. Gigi wears it so well, Iker thinks, the weight across his brow and shoulders. It's written into how he protects the goal. 

 _I'm going to retire when you do_ , he tells Gigi. _Just so you know._

 _You're so good,_ Gigi says. _You're still so good._

 _I'll be like you_ , Iker laughs.

 _Like the ticking of a clock._ Gigi pulls Iker's face close.

_It doesn't seem – fair, for me to play when you aren't._

This is an Iker who grew up with Gigi, who watched him on the television and knew about him when he was eighteen and still with Parma. An Iker for whom Gigi was his N'Kono. Why did you want to be a goalkeeper? For this Iker there is one thing: he wanted to play for Real Madrid, and that was what he was given. That was what he took. We choose to make things real, Gigi had told him, so he looks for the people he wants to make heroes.

This is an Iker who will grow old and retire the way Gigi will grow old and retire. Not with a bullet put through his brain for being off baseline. Not a shutdown mechanism as he waits, docile, GK1-8.1. This Iker will retire with the Bernabeu clapping him off the pitch, this Iker will walk his electric dog and shave every day and be horrified looking at his newest wrinkle. This Iker buries his face into the crook of Gigi's neck. _We'll go off-world_ , he says, _one of the beach-worlds. Just sit and relax._

_Uh-huh. And then we'd be back in a week to catch the games._

  _Uh-huh._

Football never ends. I don't want it to end, Iker says. I don't want it to end. I don't want this to end.

*

 

He wakes up.

The side of the bed where Gigi had been sleeping is empty save for a slight impression in the mattress, still warm. He looks at the clock: Gigi must have gone for training, or whatever he does in the morning. Run. Hang out with the team. Something.

He rolls out of bed and shuffles to the bathroom, puts his hand on his jaw, looks into the mirror. Everything about him still looks immaculate, like the first day he was dropped out of a sac onto the cold white floor and suddenly expected to live.

There's a missed call on the vidphone from Xabi. He chooses not to pick it up. Goes back to bed and lies down again, shorts and all, tracing circles on the flat of his stomach until he forgets the dream he wasn't supposed to have.

 

*

 

Juventus lose the season opener to AC Milan.

Of all the teams that didn't drown of course Milan are one of them. Inter was playing Roma at the wrong place at the wrong time, but the San Siro stands still, a house of fortified walls.

Juventus lose 2-1 and Iker watches Gigi let in both of the goals. Watches only Gigi. As he falls, the bright-coloured kit standing out against the green, as he lies on the grass in the front of a goal he was meant to save. The armband is tight around his bicep. _San Gigi_ , he thinks he hears someone say, although it isn't forceful; more like a memory of something that was.

He waits for Gigi outside the stadium. Nowadays with the iron air no one really waits outside anymore, so he leans against the metal cordon alone. They come out slowly, in drips and drabs, dwarfed by the columns far above them. They look so awfully small.

Gigi comes out almost last, freshly showered and changed. He sees Iker waiting for him. Raises his head. Stands up straight.

They don't talk all the way back. Iker moves his hand, thinks once then twice if he ought to put it on Gigi's knee which is close even across the gearbox, doesn't. He wonders if Gigi gave a post-match interview. If it's the same as it was the Italian, thanking the people for their continued support, insisting that _they all did their best._ Gigi talks like that a lot. Iker doesn't know if he remembers to take care of himself.

It's late when they get back to Iker's apartment. Gigi follows him through the door and bites his lip as Iker undresses him, taking care to fold all of his clothes and place them in a corner. Afterwards, when Gigi comes with a wordless shudder moaned into Iker's neck, Iker buries his face into Gigi's hair and breathes.

They lie on the bed, side by side, shoulders touching. Iker can still feel the tension in Gigi's shoulders and wishes he knew how to help. To tell him that the world is ending; to tell him that Italy is drowning; to tell him that Turin-the-city-Juventus-the-club won't be here, soon; to tell him that football will be over and no one has to care.

He sits up. Gigi lies where he is, eyes closed, suspended somewhere between sleep and dreaming.

Iker says, "Play an interview by Gigi Buffon."

The television boots up. Gigi's sitting in a blue t-shirt with a white J on his chest, in front of what looks like the stadium, although there's something off about it, as if it was superimposed onto a green screen. "Do you cry," someone is saying, "after a loss?"

Gigi holds the camera's gaze for a beat, then his eyelids flutter and he looks down. "I cry often and alone," he says. Frowns. "Crying helps. It frees you and makes you feel human."

"Pause."

Iker brings a hand to his face. It isn't wet.

"Continue."

Gigi's eyes glitch and flicker, and now he's looking up at the screen. He blinks and pauses on certain words. It strikes Iker that he isn't thinking about what to say, he's just – thinking. "I never cry for football." His voice is low and languorous without being lazy. Soothing and sad all at the same time. "Not for a specific defeat. I can be touched. But it's not about the defeat itself. It's something more complex and romantic."

He trails off after, looking past the camera. His lips are slightly parted. He blinks, once. The video ends.

Iker looks back at Gigi on the bed. In prime condition, for a man his age; fingers that still function, a brain that still works. And all across the country – whatever's left of it – other people are the same. Kids, waiting to grow up for a reason only they cling on to. He thinks, unbidden, of Xabi and his last job in England, and how someone he knew had still. Still. Drowning is only an inconvenience.   

How do you keep a football club? Something living, breathing, real?

You wait. For the stories to start again. The songs to sing themselves alive.

 

*

 

"Shall I ask you to recite baseline," Xabi says politely, "or are we past that point?"

They're sitting in Iker's apartment. Gigi has gone for training, but Xabi had called in advance and Iker had, this time, picked up the vidphone. _Don't go out_. Whatever part of Iker's synthetic brain with the command log had obeyed.

He bites his lip with a sudden loathing.

"Carve from stone and dream a barrow for the poet on waters of fountains that weep and whisper and weep and whisper and weep for eternity. At its dusty and sad ending, the day."

"Have you ever seen Cibeles? Fountains."

"Fountains."

"Do you remember the white cold marble of Madrid? Fountains."

"Fountains."

"Do you think you'll play forever? Eternity."

"Eternity."

"Do you think Buffon will play forever? Eternity."

"Eternity."

"Do you want to go back to Madrid? Ending."

"Ending."

"Do you want to stay here? Ending."

"Ending."

"Do you love?"

And nothing. Iker knows he's slipped up somewhere, probably in more places than one, but he stalls completely at the question, Xabi blinking blandly at him with the same expression on his face. Waiting.

"Do I love what?"

"Do you love."

Iker looks out of the window, at the shards of sunlight. Thinks of the way the sky had been blotted out by black-and-white spinners. Thinks of the dirty ragged faces on the other side of the fence. Thinks of all of the players caught between scraping together money for rust-buckets and the people who own the corporations. Thinks of the stadium in Chamartin, waiting for him to come home. Thinks of the goalposts that Gigi said are his, his and no one else's, to love and cherish and protect. Thinks of Gigi.

"I could," he says. "I think I could."

"What's stopping you?"

"Baseline. The acknowledgement that I am a replicant." Iker grins ruefully. There isn't a way to explain this without sounding sentimental, which amuses him. "Tell Perez he can't expect robots to show emotions only when it suits him."

Xabi looks at him, quiet for a moment. Then he bends down and rummages through a case he'd been carrying. "The baseline test is an affirmation of humanity's superiority over the creations they build," he says as he looks. "Naturally it would follow regardless of the expectation of the replicant. This is what happens when a sport is run by people who don't understand it."

He pulls out a shirt, bright green, dark rounded collar. Holds it out to Iker, who takes it. On the front is a brand, some sponsors, and the crest sitting pretty in the corner. Iker runs his fingers over the stitched fabric, white and gold with the diagonal blue stripe. It feels strange to actually be holding it after so long thinking. He flips it over – there's _I. CASILLAS_ at the top, there's _1_ in big, dark block letters, plain as day.

It's his. It's obscenely commercialised, it's actually the club's, it was given to him in an act of ownership, but for all that – after all that – it's his. There's a flash of a bus ride and a song, memories that come back quietly, because they were always there.

He takes a breath.

Xabi says, "The day we first met, the day you were born, I told you a story."

Iker doesn't remember this. He tilts his head and looks at Xabi, confused.

Xabi says, "Run following command prompt for GK1-8.1: Athens."

 

*

 

This is how the story starts.

This is how every story starts.

There is a boy. He has blue eyes and dark hair that's cut too short and makes him look younger than he is. He's wearing a kit that's far too baggy for him, in a mix of colours that's too garish for him. Neo-nineties fashion; so this is sometime maybe twenty years ago. He's got gloves on his hands that already fit on him like. Well.

He's young but he's leaping out of the box with a certain brand of fearlessness you can't get anywhere else. Dives into the path of one of the players, grabs the ball. Little regard for his own personal safety, much the same way he has little regard for glory without club. There's one thought in his mind: keep the ball out. Defend the goal. Be its first and last line of defence. And so he is.

The game ends, nil-nil the score. They're trooping off the field, and people are coming up to him, slapping him on the back. "Good game, Gigi," they're saying. The shirts aren't familiar – yellow and blue instead of black and white – but Gigi's smile is, even then. He heads for the showers with the rest of his teammates. They're laughing and joking and Gigi says something bright in Italian, almost swaggering.

Shower. Changing room. Walk back. Gigi's going to do this a hundred times and more in his life.

Home then is a fanciful, yellow-coloured villa, two rows of windows that look never-ending. There are four beds in Gigi's room. One of them has a couple of bags on top of them, packed neatly; another has a blade runner.

There's something about blade runners where you just know who they are without having to ask. And most of the time they frighten the fuck out of people, not because of their bulk or their guns but because of the way they carry themselves. The hunched, pinched shoulders. Gaunt cheekbones. Dead eyes.

 But Gigi, still twenty-odd and gleaming, takes no notice. "Hey, Mister," he whistles, jumping onto his bed and kicking his legs out from where they dangle off the side, "you look a little old to be a footballer."

"It took me a while to find you," the blade runner says. His voice is weary. They always are.

"I think you might be looking for someone else, Mister," Gigi says, blinking at him. "Is it the coach? Sometimes I think he's a robot programmed especially to torture us."

"You don't know."

There's an immediate shift in the blade runner's face, which once completely blank is now slack-jawed, almost incredulous.

"Don't know what?"

"You're like one of the Tyrells," the blade runner says. "Aren't you? Like the one that ran off with Deckard. Did you have your memory wiped by someone? Did Tyrell name you personally?"

"Please stop talking," Gigi says, his attention wavering. There's light pouring in from the window. The sea levels haven't risen yet.

"Here's what we're going to do." The blade runner is laying out pieces of equipment on the bed. Gigi watches him. His face has settled into placid blankness. "This is called a Voight-Kampff machine. I just want to ask you a few questions while the machine measures your responses. We won't be long."

"Wait." Gigi laughs. "You think I'm a replicant? Are you kidding, Mister? I play football, I eat pasta, I go out with my friends, I breathe and sleep the same as you. What about me seems like a replicant?"

The blade runner smiles at him. There's a triumphant note to his voice.

"All Nexus 7s and above are equipped with in-built translators."

"So?"

"I don't speak Italian."

 

*

 

He wakes up.

The sky is already dark outside. His first thought is Gigi, but there's no one else in the apartment besides him. Xabi's gone. Iker pulls himself out of bed and looks at the table, where there's a note in crisp synthetic paper, _see you tomorrow_ in Xabi's neat small handwriting. He picks up the paper and crumples it in his hands, taking a brief, pointless delight at the way the ink vanishes beneath his fingers.

It's either a Tuesday or a Wednesday. He can't remember. T-minus one, whatever the case. He doesn't know what he's supposed to feel like, what the purpose of that story was – to affirm his conclusions, to take them away from him, to remind him of his place – to tell him that nothing and no one is special. Gigi Buffon isn't the greatest goalkeeper in the history of the game; he's only the greatest because he's cheating.

Iker's still wearing Gigi's shorts. He puts his hands in their pockets.

The Nexus 8s were the generation before him, built to be physically realistic, down to the aging process. Built before people figured out what they really wanted to treat them as. When the Blackout happened all the records had been wiped and they were turned loose on the world, set free, depending on which side of the coin you fell into.

He walks to the bathroom. The mirror is as clean as the day he moved in, and he raises his head and looks at himself. Brown hair. Dark eyes. Sharp nose. Flat, wide face, square jaw, a perfectly ordinary thirty-year-old. The first replicant to play football. Not the first.

Parma had sold him on, and Juventus weren't going to sell or retire Buffon, Xabi explained. They knew they'd lucked out. They made a bargain with Wallace to erase his memory and keep him. So of course Perez, the moment he got wind of this, wanted one of his own. Exactly the same, down to the position, except this one would live forever. The Wallace Corporation is ever obliging for the right price. Iker had gotten some of the best fabricators in the business. The best memory-maker.

He thinks of grass, his childhood on the beach, how Gigi's talked to him every day yet never told him any story that doesn't start with Parma, except the one about N'Kono. He wonders if it's something that he made up over the years, as an explanation for the countless questions that would come to him, or at least something that would make it easier for himself.

At its dusty and sad ending, the day.

Iker touches the skin on his face. It's perfectly smooth.

 

*

 

"They brought us on a tour of North America once," Gigi says, "and I was a brat about it. The hotel had a couple of buggies left over from when they used to have a golf course and I stole one. Drove up and down and all around the grounds, laughing my ass off. Crazy, you know? Just having fun. But I trained hard and I made sure I always wanted to improve. Anyway, what I'm saying, Casillas, is don't take everything so seriously, okay? _I don't have a soul_ and all that. Honestly. You say _I'm_ dramatic. We're all alive, aren't we? It's how we live that matters."

 

*

 

He sweeps everything into his kit bag. It's really nothing at all, just Gigi's shorts and the shirt he was given. He folds out all of the training gear that Juventus had loaned him, shirts and socks and shorts, leaves it on the table. There's a cabinet in his kitchen that's full of empty protein packets he'd been keeping for some reason. He throws those away.

At nine o'clock sharp there's a knock on the door. Iker's sitting on the edge of the bed wearing the suit they'd given him, knees together, palms flat on his thighs, bag on the ground next to his feet.

"It's unlocked," he says.

Xabi walks in, benignly pleasant. "I trust you had a pleasant evening."

"Yes," Iker says. "When do we leave?"

"There's been a slight change of plan. I received an update from Mr. Perez and Mr. Mourinho last night. They're buying out Buffon."

"What?"

"Turin is drowning. People are liquidating assets. Perez thinks that your relationship with Buffon might be worth studying scientifically, for the development of more emotionally stable Nexus 10s. Even more than your worth as a functional asset."

"They don't want me to play for Madrid anymore?"

There's an edge to Xabi's voice. "Maybe you will. Maybe you won't. I don't know."

Iker isn't crying. He knows he isn't crying because the pain that hits him – sweet and out of the blue – is the kind of pain that goes beyond tears. Like the breath's been taken out of you. It's a stupid reason to hurt, because he's not even seen Madrid to miss it. Yet.

He is nine years old and dreaming. He is nineteen years old and it is raining on the glass.

"I am to drop you at Buffon's house," Xabi's saying. "For an hour. Mr. Mourinho has suggested that you help pick him up, since you might be able to convince him to come quietly, or get close enough to throw the switch. If you are unsuccessful, then the runners will be sent and you will both be retired."

Iker is suddenly just very tired. "Why don't you shoot me now and be done with it?"

Xabi shrugs. "Probably because of Mourinho's secret desire to be the manipulative, dramatic villain of a James Bond movie. But if that's what you prefer, I'm sure something can be arranged."

Iker looks down. His kit bag on the floor is unzipped and lying open. There's a flash of one colour, two, shockingly contrasting.

"Okay," he says. "Okay. Let's go." 

 

*

 

Gigi's house is further out of the city where it's quieter and the air is cleaner. Saved up years for this, he'd told Iker once, proud. Keeps me relaxed. He's got a little gate that Iker pushes past and a little synthetic garden with some kind of a flower bed. Iker knocks on the door and Gigi opens it, grins at him broadly. "I must say you’re the best looking stalker I’ve had."

"Are you going to make me stand on your doorstep forever?" Iker laughs.

Gigi waves him in. It’s surprisingly cosy, high ceilings and all kinds of ridiculous furniture that Gigi must have picked out from a junk heap. Gigi flops onto the sofa and waves Iker over. Iker sits next to him, turns to kiss him once on the jaw, and everything is okay, then.

"Are you leaving?"

Iker can’t tell lies.

"Yeah, in an hour."

"Nice of you to spend it with me."

"Wouldn’t spend it with anyone else," Iker grins. Pauses. Bends down to unzip his kit bag, pulls a shirt out of it – bright green, _I. CASILLAS._ He gives it to Gigi, who takes it carefully, closes his fist around the cloth. "Here."

"What happened to _they'll think I lost it_?"

"Stray dog ran away with it. Or something."

Gigi laughs, and Iker listens. It isn't final, he tells himself. It isn't final and he commits it to memory anyway, the same way he remembers all of Gigi's leaps, snatching the ball out of the air, the commands he gives to his defenders, telling Lorenzo why he stayed.

Iker knows the idolatry was made up by a memory-maker. Knows that. But he thinks – if he gets to play for Madrid, if he ever stands before the Bernabeu one day – he wants to be like this.

"Is there something you aren't telling me?"

Gigi's looking at him hard. Iker meets his eyes, sharp bright blue, and thinks of his command log. Thinks of lies and wanting to be a real boy. Thinks of choices and the swinging, spinning uncertainty of a compass needle, just before it slips into place.

"No," he says.

In Turin, in Madrid they are singing about saints. There is one religion left in the world, and it begins with grass, a crowded street, a white rectangle on either side. A pair of gloves. The people of the electric mills might have to buy exorbitantly-priced jerseys, but they buy them still, don't they. To play is to -

Iker draws a long, slow breath and looks at Gigi, who's looking at Iker's name in his hands. At least they'll both retire together. Iker grins at that.

"Can I watch some television?" he asks.

"Be my guest," Gigi says.

"Run an old Real Madrid game."

The goalkeeper isn't Iker this time, but that doesn't matter. He won't be here long enough to finish the game, but it doesn't matter. They're playing at home in white shirts. They're singing this other person's name. They're singing _llevo tu_ _camiseta_ _pegada al corazón._ You try to kill it, there are those who will come after.

"I think I understand now," he says.

Gigi smiles at him. "You're going to make a great goalkeeper," he says, putting an arm around Iker's shoulder. "I'm sure."

Iker grins back and curls his hand into a fist, flicks his thumb against his skin. It is warm and, in that moment, real. In Madrid they are singing about saints.

"Uh-huh."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 LIKE I SAID, A TRIP! If you're still confused, I have incoherent handwritten notes to make it worse: [a general overview](https://78.media.tumblr.com/b67fbbe0cc10f93a479f737ae0aca9f6/tumblr_p6qkpcV2x71vgoq0ko1_540.jpg) and [timeline](https://78.media.tumblr.com/8a05a97bbcf4e5b7e2aedb6a325624a1/tumblr_p6pugmaW0d1vgoq0ko1_1280.jpg) and [notes](https://78.media.tumblr.com/6115382ce92021c69746c1af7a342ab4/tumblr_p6pugmaW0d1vgoq0ko3_1280.jpg) and [stuff about the ending](https://78.media.tumblr.com/5a3fc265b3e833eccf0187ffc205f26f/tumblr_p6pugmaW0d1vgoq0ko2_1280.jpg)

(they're here bc i predictably ran out of footnote space)

(also VTOL is vertical take off and landing)

**Author's Note:**

> \- I vored a bunch of things but for Gigi [this article](http://www.goal.com/story/buffon-goal-50-english/index.html) \- where the childhood/Parma stuff is from - and the Juve docu were V Good and for Iker [this interview](https://unamadridista.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/iker-casillas-the-real-interview/%20) was Mmm  
> \- Blame this all on Blade Runner 2049 and [Like Stories of Old](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4etinsAy34)  
> \- Iker's baseline - Antonio Machado's poems: [x](http://www.warpoets.org/conflicts/spanish-war/) [x](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=29318)  
> \- [right ventr-what](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4566319.stm)  
> \- [A Discussion on Replicant Serial Numbers](https://www.reddit.com/r/bladerunner/comments/77ve4t/what_are_the_implications_of_rachael_being_a/)  
> \- Iker's debut: this [ugly ass](http://estaticos02.marca.com/imagenes/2012/09/13/en/football/real_madrid/1347552925_extras_mosaico_noticia_1_1.jpg) yellow/black thing that makes him look like a?? twink dominatrix??  
> \- Gigi's soliloquies about cherishing his goal are [real](https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/gianluigi-buffon-letter-juventus-goalkeeper-pens-heartfelt-note-to-the-goal-he-defends-a6944256.html)  
> \- The Spanish song Iker keeps hearing is [Hala Madrid Y Nada Mas](https://genius.com/Real-madrid-cf-hala-madrid-y-nada-mas-annotated)  
> (nerdnote: the reason there's so much repetition in this fic I think was meant to tie in with the way the baseline test is so repetitive, and the whole idea of can something as emotional as football be drummed in like that, and also a bit of Red or Dead i GUESS)  
> \- Gigi's [N'Kono](https://www.football-italia.net/109371/buffon-why-i-became-goalkeeper%E2%80%A6)  
> \- I googled [quotes about saints](https://catholicquotations.com/becoming-a-saint/), so  
> \- [Gigi touchin Iker crest...](http://as01.epimg.net/futbol/imagenes/2017/05/30/champions/1496126551_639609_1496127048_noticia_normal.jpg)  
> \- [i can't believe Gigi is legit this dramatique about football](http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/19/deball.php)  
> \- I stole the Calciopoli explanation from [Tifo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpdlFKO56Ws)  
> \- The [Lorenzo interview](https://www.101greatgoals.com/blog/legend-gianluigi-buffon-explains-why-he-didnt-leave-juventus-when-they-were-relegated-to-serie-b-video/)  
> \- [SHORTS!](https://as.com/diarioas/2015/11/12/english/1447369022_351049.html%0Ahttps://www.football-italia.net/114210/buffon-%E2%80%98thank-you-casillas%E2%80%99)  
> \- Was the dog running away referencing [this iconic moment](http://infocasillas-blog.tumblr.com/post/39200583587/photos-iker-casillas-walking-his-dog-doce-in)? why yes  
> \- [after the 03 semi final](http://e2.365dm.com/15/05/16-9/20/iker-casillas-gianluigi-buffon-real-madrid-juventus-2003-champions-league_3299709.jpg?20150506163413)  
> \- I googled lists of Juve legends for that bit aND NOW, WEEKS AFTER THE SHADPOCALYPSE, I REGRET  
> \- For u nerds: [an architectural study of Juventus' stadium](http://www.majowiecki.com/studio/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/2011-The-structural-architecture-of-the-new-Juventus-stadium.pdf)  
> \- [Juve song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9yPVNfSZ3E)  
> \- [stands](https://footballtripper.com/juventus-stadium-guide/#Stands)  
> \- [Parece que fue -](https://www.realmadrid.com/noticias/2015/07/declaracion-de-iker-casillas)I saw my dream come true. - Iker's farewell.  
> \- The getafe game was...his last  
> \- The pr0n poem is actually about [Cybele/Cibeles](http://www.aestheticrealism.net/poetry/Attis-Catullus.htm) i.e. the Madrid fountain lmou  
> \- yes their dumbass retirement pact!  
> \- It took a long time to find a title for this...But it's from [Where's the Orchestra](https://genius.com/Billy-joel-wheres-the-orchestra-lyrics) by my good pal  
> \- Massive thx to kwoppend and waumdeuter for holdin my butte <333
> 
> HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAITWIN! I'm so glad to have met you over this year instead of ADMIRING YOU DISTANTLY and I love your writing and your spirit and you!!! I hope I didn't ruin ur faves horribly AND IF I DID PLS WRITE SPITEFIC TO CORRECT THIS INJUSTICE :> Vores your paws and kees u and pattes ur butte forever!! <333


End file.
